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Just a few simple photographic setups for shooting your stones or Jewellery. The person iS the subject/stone in this Case. Discs are reflectors and disc around camera lens is a macro Lens reflector which can be had from Adorama.com for under $10. The reflectors can be true photo reflectors or white poster board, cardboard wrapped in crumpled up aluminum foil or a silver reflective fold up car windshield shade which cost about $6 from Wal-Mart automotive and are essentially same thing as a real photo one as long as get the oval ones that fold up into a small disc.Read more…

September 13, 2010, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

Barbra over at Gemologyonline made a post recently that reminded me a an important article that I forgot to post about, so here it is, better late then never!

This spring, the New York laboratory examined a 17.02 ct reddish orange spinel that contained a few small expansion halos or “blebs” emanating from strings of minute inclusions. The appearance of the inclusions suggested the stone was of natural origin — but may have been heat treated.

Well, as many know there is lots of work being done with “jeweler’s” silicas, aka man-made glass for jewelery usage, and they are now matching colors with Refractive Index to simulate certain natural stones, and with RI’s ranging in the 1.54-2.1 range, they can simulate almost any gemstone out there!

New York–Following months of discussion and debate about what jewelers should say when selling lead glass-filled rubies to consumers, the Gemstone Industry and Laboratory Conference (GILC) ruby committee–which held a meeting about the issue during the Tucson gem shows in February–has reached an agreement on disclosure.Read more…

This 1.05 ct pear shape (9.81 x 5.95 x 3.06 mm) was color-graded as equivalent to G. In addition to pinpoint inclusions, it contained some feathers and fractures along the girdle, and its clarity grade was equivalent to I1.

Well, this will make things a bit more difficult in determining whether a diamond is natural or synthetic. So, folks, pay some very close attention to your diamonds you get in to ID and/or appraise, this could be a very costly mistake! “If in doubt send it out!™” I doubt these are saturating the market currently in large numbers, but it more then likely will not be long until they are!

First off let me start by showing the image that started the online flaming and arguments towards myself for posting it. I do need to add that technically my initial description of the image was actually not totally correct!! Instead of calling it a picture showing the fracture filling of a hessonite garnet, I technically should have called it an image showing the partially filled fracture of a hessonite garnet.

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